For a few months now, I have been involved in a jail ministry. My heart breaks for the women I see there. Some of them remind me of myself before I was saved. Many of them have lost custodial rights to their children. Most of them will face the same people and temptations when they are released that helped to take them down that bad road they were on before.

Recently, I was allowed to enter the cells and speak with many of them on a more intimate basis for a few hours. I don't know if this will make sense to anyone else but I had a hard time leaving the women later. Part of me actually wanted to stay with them and continue to do what I could to help them--my love for them was so great. (I'm sure actually being locked up without the ability to walk out would make it feel much different but I'm just telling you what I felt in the moment.) But that feeling was something I know God must have put in my heart because it didn't come from me. Some of the women have been there for a long time. Some are very young but have already experienced more of life's dark passageways than most of us will ever see. The things they will have to overcome when they get out are so daunting, that I would be more fearful taking their place in their homes (if they have one) than taking their place in the jail if I could.

One of things I do is use the fact that I have a past I am not proud of to reach out to these girls. I have said many times that the only reason I have never been incarcerated is because I didn't get caught. I tell them I need Jesus just as much as they do. They need to know that Satan is trying to destroy them just like he tried to destroy me. I can never take back the things I've done just as the prisoners cannot either. How horrible it must be to live with the knowledge of who you have become when it is something you are ashamed of! You can see the shame on some of their faces. I understand shame. There are things I've done I'm ashamed of...still. But thank God I don't have to be ashamed of who I am now. I shared with the women that the only thing I can do about my past is to fix my heart on serving God now. I remember reading something someone said that I've never forgotten. They said the first step toward solving a problem is to stop contributing to it. That reminds me of what Jesus told the woman caught in adultery when He said to her: "Go and sin no more." I cling to Romans 8:28 where it says that God can make all things work together for good to them who love Him and are called according to His purpose. That's the only hope I have. Maybe allowing me to go to the women in jail is one of the ways God is working good out of my evil. Maybe hearing about what God did for me will help one of those poor, imprisoned souls. So, please remember us when you pray--all the people involved in the jail ministries. We need wisdom and the guidance from the Holy Spirit. I don't want to set my foot inside that detention center if I don't have the guidance of His Holy Spirit. And please remember the prisoners too. Our pastor, Bro. Dale Campbell preached about the chains of sin last Sunday and how the unsaved, though not in physical chains, are bound by spiritual ones. Most of these jailed women know what it is to wear shackles when they're taken to court and they know what it is to be bound by chains of sin too. What a terrible burden! What sin-sick souls!

Please pray for these poor prisoners. Some have accepted the call of Jesus. Many have not. Many will be incarcerated still through the holidays and long after. They talk about Thanksgiving and Christmas. They have families that are suffering because they are in jail and a lot of them have children. Maybe there are a few in there who don't deserve the sentence they received. Maybe some of them deserve more. I don't know. But one thing I do know: Everyone of them needs Jesus just as much as I do.

Sometimes, people question me when I make comments online about my faith. I respond to people who claim the Bible is full of errors and those who say God is not good. Maybe something I say will plant a seed. The Bible tells us in 1st Timothy 3 to always be ready to give an answer to everyone who asks you and to give the reason for the hope that you have. But it goes on to tell us to do this with gentleness and respect. I was speaking with someone who questioned the goodness of God because of some scriptures about slavery when someone else told me they were raised Roman Catholic but did not believe anymore. They wanted to know why I still believed. This is the answer I gave them:

I'm pleased to discuss this with you. You asked why I believed in God. Since I was a young girl, I knew that I was given life and I recognized there had to be a power somewhere who gave that life to me. I would lie in bed at night and think about it and I surmised that a Creator would have to have always existed for there ever to be anything. Eternal existence is beyond our tiny brains but it must be so. Fifty years later, I still believe these thoughts to be true. An astronomer may claim to look through a telescope and see evidence of a big bang that happened millions of years ago but that does nothing to negate the fact Something had to exist in the first place for there to be anything…even a big bang. I began a search when I was in my twenties to find out who my Creator was. Did this Creator want me to know Him or Her? People who believe they are designed by an intelligent mind must then question whether that mind wants to know them or be known by them. That answer is clear in that though God does not show Himself to us in physical presence of face and form, but shows attributes of Himself in the creation all around us. Also, in every tribe and tongue, man has an inherent resolve to worship something. That tells me something else about my Creator. He wanted us to acknowledge who He is. He wants us to know Him. After dabbling in other beliefs, I looked at the Bible again. It is an illogical argument to say I only believe a certain thing because I happened to live in a place where it was taught. In fact, that is one of the main reasons, I backed away from the Bible. Many things about my childhood were not pleasant. I could have blamed the God some people claimed to serve and I would have if I had found out who they were was a true reflection of what God wanted them to be. So, I sought God's face...whoever He was. Clearly, He wants to be known. Clearly, He expects faith because He doesn't show Himself. Now the Bible tells us of a time He was seen by His creations. And though beautiful, glorious angels were created by Him, 1/3 of them decided to leave Him and chose the way of pride that comes from sin. Scripture also tells us that the main instigator of all the trouble in heaven fell to Earth. In fact, Jesus says He saw Lucifer fall.

Why would God allow such an evil being to live among a lower creation (us, in terms of ability and knowledge) to influence them? Because He wanted the beings who live in heaven with Him to be the kind who would choose Him without even seeing Him. Just like a rich man cannot really trust who loves him for his money and power or who doesn't, God has made a way to see if the people of His creation choose Him for the right reasons. There will always be those who pick apart the scriptures because they don't want to serve God. God understands their hearts. He knows why they are really rejecting Him. Because the Bible also tells us that when God was making His plan, "He wondered that there was no intercessor." This is where we leave the Old Testament with all its prophecies of a Messiah who would come into the world and set up His kingdom and we enter the realm of the New Testament where the blind are given sight (what an analogy!) and God's love for mankind is made even more apparent. And though Jesus is well known to be a true historical figure, people still refuse to believe. They don't want a God they will be accountable to. They are showing their Creator with the very life He gave them that they choose the way the 1/3 of the angels chose. Then we come to the prayer of repentance. All have sinned. God knew that so He made a way to Him through Jesus and I found that Way. I followed His Spirit and I repented of my sin and I believed on the blood of Jesus Christ that was meant to cover my sins---the supreme sacrifice for a heavenly being who had creation at His fingertips. The thing that happened to me next was huge. A burden I had carried so long was lifted from me and I felt as though I had been cleansed on the inside. I continue to grow too. When you are reborn in the Spirit of Christ, you enter a relationship with a Being who loved you so much He died for you. It changes your life. I have peace now that I never had before. I've become a better mother and a better wife. I hunger for the Word of God and though I never deserved it, I have become one of His. My soul answers you with evidences it cannot prove because my heart had to discover it for myself. And that's the way God made it to be. I don't know all. I don't understand all but I do know this beyond a shadow of a doubt: I have become the child of a King and His name is Jesus and He saved my soul from the pit created for Satan and his angels of evil. And one day, after this testing ground is gone and people are with who they chose to be with, I will be with Him. I choose Jesus.